At my wits end

Newbie here. I just googled "why is my husband so thoughtless and inconsiderate?" and found this website! Wow. It's so incredible to find a place where so many might understand my pain.

I will try to keep this brief, which always seems tough when talking about ADD! A little background: We are both undiagnosed ADD (according to my research). We have been together 2.5 years and living together for 1.5 years, he's 44, I am 47. I have no children, he has two boys, one is 25 and lives on his own, the other is 12 and lives 9 hours away. We feel like we're married and often refer to each other that way...We live together now and are planning to get married, no date set. The wedding is pending our house being built. We love each other and want to grow old together. But this ADD thing has me really scared. I am so aware of my symptoms, but he is the complete opposite and doesn't think it's harming our relationship. I am so tired of trying to talk to him, yelling at him, pleading with him, crying for him to understand that this is serious and he is hurting our relationship very badly. He keeps saying "Thank you for the wake up call, I am going to pull my head out of my a** now and you will see a changed man...I promise" It doesn't happen.

Today, I made plans to have lunch with my boyfriend. My boyfriend is a project manager for a custom home builder. He's a busy guy. I'm a landscape designer and internet marketer and work at home. So anyway, we agree on a time and I was pleased to see that my boyfriend was there on time, actually early. I've been complaining loudly lately about his inability to keep in touch when he's going to be late. He's always late because somebody needed something and he's taking care of somebody else. Sends a clear message at this point. He says he's sorry he takes me for granted.... He is Mr. Perfect Multi-Tasker Impeccable Time Manager at work, but can't seem to be on time (or call when he's late) when we have plans....

The reason I'm sitting here in search of answers and eyes full of dried tears is that for the %$#@th time I've made plans to have lunch with him, I get there hoping for (I admit) some "one on one time" , hoping to see a glimmer of interest in his eye or hear even one question about my day or my life. Looking for some intimacy and bonding basically. Back to the %#@th time story; we are sitting there for several minutes making small talk, or more commonly he's taking phone calls. I mean God forbid he could turn his phone off to have lunch with me, oh no, he only does that when he's in a meeting with a client. So, this happened today as it has many times....we're sitting there and his co-workers walk in, or other contractors he works with and sit down with us. He's invited them to join us for lunch and didn't bother to mention it. I know this many sound trivial. I'm just so raw to all the inconsideration and plain lack of common courtesy, or basic communication, every tiny thing is huge to me now...so much is piled up. I wasn't really needing to have lunch with my husband and the plumber, or whoever. They just talk about work the whole time anyway. I end up feeling very unimportant and frustrated. Any my boyfriend is his usual oblivious-happy-as-a-clam-self!

After nearly 3 years together now, I can say that he is the most insensitive, thoughtless, careless, emotionally unavailable, poorest communicator guy I've ever been with. (And I've been with a lot of jerks) The good thing is that he's happy, happy, happy all the time. Never a cross word for me, never any criticism whatsoever for me. Which makes me think he's just stuffing it all. There MUST be things about me that drive him crazy! That's normal.

I'm ashamed to say that I read his emails and go through his phone to read texts just to see what he's forgotten to tell me. He knows I do this.

What is going on in his head? Why can't he remember to tell me anything? Again, he is Johnny on the spot at work and super detail oriented. He keeps track of a gillion details and talks to clients and subs all day. I mean he is so good at his job it's ridiculous! I've become a little resentful of that actually. He bends over backwards to take care of the company he works for and his clients (and there is NO financial gain in him doing so , he is very underpaid). He does so much work off the clock it makes me crazy! My point is, he does NOT bend over backwards to make me happy as he does at work. I don't feel I'm even on his "to-do" list!

I often feel he doesn't even know how to ask me questions about myself! He will sometimes remember to ask "How was your day", but he's totally satisfied with "fine" and doesn't ask any more questions, or keep up with what's going on around the house, like the bills getting paid...he has no clue. Of course we can talk for hours in the evening about his job, because I ask questions and pay attention so I know what's going on with each client. If I start talking about my work or something important to me, he will often interrupt me to talk about himself. Yea, everyone does that occasionally, but it's habitual with him and it just makes me feel he's not paying attention to anything I say!

Comments

There are good books on ADHD, codependency, and other subjects that may help you. Many are talked about on this forum. Read every post on this forum you can, no matter how old. The posts on this forum have helped me understand ADHD so much more than just reading books alone. Good luck.

I am also new to site and feel your pain. My Husband also is good at his job and the things he cares about. Not me or the kids outside of sports.
Mine never asks how im doing or even knows what goes on in my day. Do you feel like you are married to a rock? No feelings - no emotion- no communication !!
I have found reding the posts hear
help. Your not alone .

LOL. I can relate to the "married to a rock" comparison! Often, my guy does show emotion though, and expresses tears even when he knows he's hurt me. He's very apologetic and makes a lot of promises about how he's going to change and "IT" will never happen again....I've stopped believing his promises which is sad of course. I hate that I have to get to the point of yelling, crying and threatening to end it to get his attention. I can not continue living with that kind of stress. Knock on wood, but in the past week, he's showing great effort. Not sure of the reason, but I did let him know how fed up I am with his promises. It seems that telling him that if we were dating and he wanted me to be his girlfriend he'd be treating me alot different, or I would have dumped him. He thanked me for putting it that way. Don't know if the "new" him is going to stick, but my stress level is way down and he's doing his chores without being prompted, being on time when we have plans--and keeping in touch when he's going to be late. He hasn't been perfect by a long shot, but it's been a drastic improvement....He even made himself available for some spontaneous intimate pillow talk the other night. It made me feel loved and like my partner and I were on the same team.

The lack of communication drives me nuts especially when I see how well he communicates with dozens of people at work.

Thank you Lily1 for your response to my post. I have been doing a lot of reading here and will continue. I'm a reader/researcher when I have a problem, I want to solve it! I really want to break the parent/child scenario that's developed in our relationship. I could just "do it all myself" (regarding chores....), but I feel that's teaching him that I will and then he really won't make any effort! By reminding and delegating I keep hoping he will make a habit of doing things around the house. Either way, I'm resentful and definitely not "turned on" by this role.